Downs Syndrome Cheerleader Vs. Bullies: Basketball Team's Got Her Back

Desiree Andrews walks down a hallway at Lincoln
Middle  School in Kenosha, Wisconsin with
three basketball players who defended her
from bullies during a game at the school.  

Maybe I'm being Pollyannish, but it seems this has been a bad week or two for bullies.

What with Curt Schilling's outing the Twitter bullies tormenting his daughter, and the dance party response to the heavyset guy who was fat shamed online, and now a new case, things are pretty good.

You take what you can get.

The latest bit of good news came from a middle school basketball court in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Desiree Andrews, 14, is enjoying some positive viral Internet fame, and so is the Lincoln Middle School basketball team after what started as another ugly case of bullying turned into a demonstration on how to do the right thing.

I think the whole incident went viral because people are clammoring for news of people acting with a bit of dignity.

As the Kenosha News reported, Desiree,has Down syndrome and is a Lincoln Middle School cheerleader. She was bullied by some jerks in the home bleachers as she cheered on the school's basketball team recently.

During a time out, three members of the school's basketball team, Miles Rodriquez, Scooter Terrien and Chase Vasquez, stormed off the court and told the bullies to knock it off

Desiree's father, Cliff Andrews, said the basketball players intervened in nick of time.

'She saw that I was upset,' Andrews said. 'She threw her hands around me and made me look at her face and said, 'Papa it's OK. I still love them even if they don't like me.'"

It turns out, unsurprisingly, that lots of people in Kenosha and Lincoln Middle School like Desiree.

The school and its students now refer to the gymnaisum where the incident took place as "D's House," named for Desiree. 

Students and people throughout town also bought and wear lots of t-shirts with a "D's House" logo on them.

Still the Andrews family isn't letting this attention go to their heads.

In the Kenosha News article, Desiree's father said:

"'My concern is putting Desiree out there and people thinking we're doing it just so she can get all this attention,' Andrews said. 'It didn't start out that way. It started out when some fine young men stood u for her in a bullying situation. I didn't want to lose track of that. I don't want to take away rom what those boys did."

People with Down syndrome seem to be increasingly getting the positive attention they deserve. Actress Jamie Brewer, who has Down syndrome, recently modeled an original design by Carrie Hammer on the runway at New York Fashion Week to high praise.

I'm not quite sure why the scummier people among us bully people with Down syndrome anyway. Everyone I've ever met with Down syndrome have been nice, engaging people who you want to be friends with.

Or as Scooter Terrien, one of the basketball players said, 'It's not fair when other people get treated wrong because we're all the same."

A New Low: Teacher Bullies Kid In Classroom

This 15 year old kid was bullied by a substitute
teacher in an Illinois classroom. The kid was smart
enough to film it on his phone. We're hoping authorities
go after the teacher big time.  

You'll see the outrage meter building today.

Over the weekend, news was spreading about a bullying case in Illinois. It's exploding in the news as I write this early Monday morning.

This wasn't standard issue bullying, the kind we are simultaneously frustrated by and weary of. It wasn't student on student.

It was teacher on student, says the Daily Herald, a newspaper in suburban Chicago.  It was a substitute teacher, and what was this guy thinking?

The bullied student was smart enough to film the incident on his phone, so we have proof. Bullies are often victimized a second time when they are not believed by adult figures when they report the bullying.

This is all on film. The kid's parents uploaded it onto YouTube for the world to see.

In the Streamwood High School classroom in Illinois, a student bully drew a crude drawing on a computerized board of the kid, and labeled it "Stephen," but mispelled it.

The annoyed victim said it was spelled wrong.

The scummy substitute teacher, who hasn't been publicly named yet, wrote on the board "Stephen's ugly ass."

Stephen says he's been picked on by students for a long time, because he's a big dude. He tries to shrug that off.

But a teacher going after him is a new low. "He should not be allowed around children if he's going to do that to someone," Stephen told the Daily Herald.

The school said it is investigating and has suspended the substitute teacher. The evidence seems pretty obvious, so I don't know what there is to investigate. But I understand schools have to go by the rules, and the process takes time.

I also hope the substitute teacher is criminally prosecuted, too. This is child abuse. I can't wait for the teacher's explanation as to why he did this.

On the bright side, I do see there is a big wave of support for Steven. The Daily Herald's comment/Facebook page with the article is filled with messages supporting the kid.

That the kid is being so graceful and so resourceful over this incident tells me he's going to be a very successful adult.

That's a LOT more than I can say for the dufus substitute teacher.

Here's the horrible video Stephen took in the classroom:

Uintah: Worst Public School On The Planet Literally Snatches Food From Kids Because Parents Behind On Payments

Congratulations to Uintah Elementary School in Salt Lake City for being by far the worst public school on the planet.

Uintah Elementary School in Salt Lake City, where
the lunchroom bully is apparently the school's
so-called nutrition manager.  

I bestow this "honor" on Uintah because some food service managers there who were pissed off because some parents were behind on their kids' lunch payments, snatched the lunch trays away from the kids whose parents who hadn't paid, and threw them in the trash, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. 

This of course happened in front of the students' classmates, so the food managers bullied the kids, set the Worst. Possible. Example., wasted food, and are basically evil people.

I can't believe so far nobody has been brought up on child abuse charges over this. Nobody has been fired yet, either, which is amazing, though I'm sure that will happen. At least I hope so. A lot of heads need to roll here.

At first, the school offered a pretty weak apology.

"If students were humilated and upset...that's very unfortunate and not what we wanted to happen," said school district spokesman Jaosn Olsen said, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

Oh, come on!  That's EXACTLY what whoever was responsible for this wanted to happen!  The idiots, who put new meaning into the word "vindictive" WANTED to humiliate the kids, it seems to me,  because they wanted to take it out on somebody. They couldn't reach the parents to humiliate them, so let's pick on the kids!

So I guess there's school sanctioned bullying and child abuse.   It does make me wonder if the idiots in charge of Uintah Elementary School let bullying go on unimpeded.

Another sad thing there are probably a number of educators and food workers and administrators at Uintah Elementary School who have the students' best interests at heart.  The Tribune article noted some employees in the school cafeteria wept when they saw what was going on, but were powerless to do anything about it.

By bullying these kids over really what was a pittance in lunch money, the people who did this surely demoralized the educators who do give a damn about the kids and want them to thrive.  So those good educators are probably less effective now.

Way to create an environment where kids learn!

Since then, after the initially weak "apology" and no doubt because there was a huge, building and understandably torrentially angry outcry among parents, the school put out a Facebook message.

The Facebook message said in part:

"We understand the feelings of upset parents and students who say this was an embarrassing and humiliating situation. We again apologize and commit to working with parents in rectifying this situation to ensuring students are never treated in this manner again."

Notice the careful language here, avoiding responsibility. It refers to upset parents and students who say  this was an embarrassing situation. The word say suggests an attitude of "Well, they SAY they were embarrassed but they're just trying to draw attention to themselves."

The rest of the Facebook post is full of excuses. Well, we tried to get ahold of the parents, we did give the affected students some fruit and milk, yada yada yada.

The school did concede this should have been handled in a different manner.

Ya think?

What in the world was the school trying to gain? They weren't recouping any money from parents who didn't pay because they threw the food out. The school said they threw the food out because it couldn't be served to other kids who did pay once it was placed on a tray.

THEN LET THE DAMN KID EAT HIS FOOD AND DEAL WITH HIS OR HER PARENTS LATER!!!!  I can't believe anybody is that stupid so as to just throw their food away.

Of course, they're not that stupid  As I said, somebody in that school really wanted to humiliate those kids.  Certainly not the majority of people who work there, but one or two people. It only takes one bully to really make a mess of things.

Now this story has gone viral, and the decent people of the world are sending terribly angry messages to the school from all over the world. You should read the comments on their non apology apology Facebook post! 

Feel free to go there and post your own thoughts. (Though please, no threats or ugly language please.)

All Parents Must Watch French Anti-Bullying Ad

Bullying has been hugely in the news lately, what with the bullying case in the Miami Dolphins locker room that led one player to quit and the alleged bully to be suspended.

A still from the powerful French
anti-bulling ad.  

And, worse, we keep hearing of youths committing suicide because of incessant bullying. Makes me want to cry every time I hear about one of those cases.

Now, there's a brilliant television ad out of France that all parents, all adults really ought to see.

Bullying is often dismissed as a rite of passage for kids, a day of being picked on a bit. It toughens you up, supposedly. Adults do it to. "Toughening up" was the excuse used in the Miami Dolphins locker room, apparently.

Anyway, the French ad puts adults in the shoes of the kids being bullied. In the ad, a proper looking businessman tries to do his work, but co-workers relentlessly bully and assault the businessman with extreme cruelty, in much the same way kids bully some of their peers.

I'll translate from French the tag line at the end of the ad: "A day at work does not look like this. And a day at school?"

According to Huffington Post, the ad is a promo for a  documentary on school harassment airing on France 5.  Apparently, bullying is a severe problem in France, too.

Let's help put a stop to it. We can begin with watching this awesome but painful video:

High School Footballers Defy Stereotype.....

So here's the stereotype. The high school quarterback, the popular guy, is the one who bullies the unpopular students, the ones that are not jocks, not fashionable, not  what he likes.

Chy Johnson hangs with her buddy, Carson Jones
at an Arizona high school

It's nice to see stereotypes are often wrong, as is the case in an Arizona high school, where Chy Johnson, 16, a special needs student was bullied because of her disability. (People who bully this way deserve a special place in hell. )

The girl's mom called Carson Jones, the high school's star quarterback, because she was friends with the family. The mom just wanted a bit of intelligence on who was bullying her daughter, and when.

Jones and his buddies fixed that problem in a hurry by taking Chy under their wing, Marie Saavedra reported for TV3 in Arizona last month.

The hang out with her, have lunch with her, just friends. In high school culture, you don't go against the quarterback, so the bullying stopped pretty quicky.

So here's to Jones and his buddies to prove that just a bullying culture can change, if the right people take action in the right way.

Confronting Bullies Often Reverses the Hate

Two stories I saw recently illustrate how confronting bullies works. At least sometimes.

The first instance could have turned out like a version of "Carrie,".the Stephen King novel and subsequent movie about how mean kids set up a girl they disliked as a joke homecoming queen, with incredible grisly results.

Michigan homecoming queen Whitney Kropp

In the Michigan case, there was no blood, no teleportation, no insane mothers,  no fires, no weirdness, no deaths, like in "Carrie." Things worked out much better than that in Whitney Kropp's town of West Branch, Michigan,

 Kropp, 16,  was picked by classmates as homecoming queen. Sounds nice, until it turned out that she was pranked by bullies. They picked her as queen not so she could actually be the centerpiece of the homecoming, but as an excuse to harass her, according to NBC News.

"I felt like I wasn't worthy. Why even be part of this community, this world, if I'm just going to be tossed around like basically a piece of trash," Kropp asked.

Then the tide turned. Eventually, the joke was on the bullies. Kropp's friends and supporters decided if she was going to be homecoming queen, she was going to be a legitimate one, and a glorious one at that.

Friends and people in town rallied around her, people donated hairstyling, a dress, dinner, etc., her boyfriend happily took her to the homecoming dance and Kropp was a damn good homecoming queen, by all accounts. 

And I bet the people who started the "joke" really felt like idiots after all this.   Talk about a backfire. The whole incident proves that if enough people confront a bully, things can turn out for the best.

A second, even better example of this came  when sombody posted on Reddit a photo of a Sikh woman with facial hair, in an effort to ridicule her appearance. 

Siks do not alter their bodies because their religion teaches them that their bodies are a perfect gift from God and ought not be altered. 

The Sikh woman who was the target of the somewhat snarky photographer and the haters who posted nasty stuff about her saw all this on Reddit. In a display of strength and graces, she responded thusly, as reported by The Daily What:

Balpreet Kaur

"Hey, guys. This is Balpreet Kaur, the girl from the picture. ... I'm not embarrased or even humiliated by the attention [negative and positve] that this picture is getting because, it's who I am.

Yes, I'm a baptized Sikh woman with facial hair. Yes, I realize that my gender is often confused and I look different than most women.

However, baptized Sikhs believe in the sacredness of this body - it is a gift that has been given to us by the Divine Being [which is genderless, actually] and, must keep it intact as a submission to the divine will. Just as a child doesn't reject the gift of his/her parents, Sikhs do not reject the body that has been given to us. ...

My attitude and thoughts and actions have more value in them than my body because I recognize that this body is just going to become ash in the end, so why fuss about it?

When I die, no one is going to remember what I looked like, heck, my kids will forget my voice, and slowly, all physical memory will fade away. However, my impact and legacy will remain: and, by not focusing on the physical beauty, I have time to cultivate those inner virtues and hopefully, focus my life on creating change and progress for this world in any way I can. ...

I appreciate all of the comments here, both positive and less positive because I've gotten a better understanding of myself and others from this."


I do not think I've ever read a more impressive response to bullying than this.  Kaur appears from the picture to be a young woman, so the world is likely to benefit from her wisdom for decades to come.

The photographer who took the picture of Balpreet Kaur and posted it on Reddit saw Kaur's message.  Humanity wins again. Here was his response:

"I know that this post ISN'T a funny post but I felt the need to apologize to the Sikhs, Balpreet, and anyone else I offended when I posted that picture. Put simply it was stupid. Making fun of people is funny to some but incredibly degrading to the people you're making fun of. It was an incredibly rude, judgmental, and ignorant thing to post. ...

I've read more about the Sikh faith and it was actually really interesting. It makes a whole lot of sense to work on having a legacy and not worrying about what you look like. I made that post for stupid internet points and I was ignorant.

So reddit I'm sorry for being an a**hole and for giving you negative publicity. Balpreet, I'm sorry for being a closed minded individual. You are a much better person than I am Sikhs, I'm sorry for insulting your culture and way of life. Balpreet's faith in what she believes is astounding ."

A lot of people who are mean or bully surely don't stop and think about the humanity of the people they're targeting. It's easy to go down that route. The words, pictures, videos and images you see on line are abstractions. I know I don't always see through that to understand the people involved have lives, emotions, feelings, contributions to make, hurt moments to heal, joy to share.

To me, it's actually OK sometimes to criticize, pick on somebody who willfully does something stupid, mean, close minded or destructive. I do it all the time. Almost all of us do. Yet, it's also useful to offer the people we don't like a chance to redeem themselves.

It's even more important to let people who don't deserve the hate to let themselves shine, as Kropp and especially Kaur did.

Meanwhile, I found a riveting account on boingboing.net on how a man and his family were terrorized by an Internet troll, an assault that included death threats. It's a really good read, so go for it.

New Bullying Outrage: Coach vs 13 Year Old

The news has been abuzz the past week with that 68-year old bus monitor being bullied by middle school kids on a bus.

The outrage has been understandably intense, and people have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the victim in that case.

But the bullying continues for others. Another video, sure to shock, is hitting the airwaves this afternoon. In it, a hockey game among 10 to 13-year olds had just ended on Saturday. The coach of one team intentionally trips a 13-year-old at the post game handshake. The kid got a broken wrist out of the deal.

Watch and be mad, really mad: (Then more details below)



According to The Province, a British Columbia publication, the coach was arrested but released Saturday. 

A decision on whether to charge him with a crime is pending, and depends upon whether  the parents of the victim want to press charges.

CTV/Vancouver identified the coach as Martin Tremblay, but said he could not be reached for comment. (I'll bet!)  CTV said sources close to Tremblay said he slipped on the ice. Watch the video and judge for yourself. (Didn't look like a slip to me, but what do I know?)

I'm sure Internet sleuths are working on getting more information on Tremblay just as they quickly figured out the identities of the kids who abused the bus monitor in New York State.

You can see already what effect this guy's "leadership" has on the team, by this paragraph from the Province. (The coach was with a team called the Hornets, the injured 13-year old was with the Steel)

"Later footage also shows the man (the coach) trading words with a referee while a Steel coach standing in shock is ushered off the ice. A Hornets player is also caught on camera throwing a water bottle at the bleachers while others on the team applaud and gesture with their arms open. The Hornets coach also gives a middle finger to those yelling from the bleachers."


This coach is even worse than the miserable kids who abused the bus monitor. The kids with the bus monitor are young, immature, and more prone to doing stupid things. What's the Hornets coach's excuse?

I can't wait to hear Tremblay's explanation for this. I'm sure the kid did something during the game the coach didn't like, but tripping and injuring him? And so blatantly.

If he went out of his way to hurt that 13-year old hockey player, does he hurt other kids? Does he have kids, and does he abuse them? These are questions that need to be answered.

I'm predicting the coach will offer some lame excuse and lame semi apology at some point. But still. He's the latest installment of Worst Person of the Week.

A Blow Against Anti-Gay Bullying

From Buzzfeed, this note. It supposedly appeared on a school bulletin board, but it can't be confirmed, since they didn't even mention which school.

Still, if it's legit, it's an advance:

A Touching Anti-Bullying ad

The following video is making some major rounds on the blogosphere and I'm going to join in, because the more the message spreads, the better.  It's an Irish public service announcement fighting anti-gay bullying.

Regular readers of my previous blog at mattalltrades.wordpress.com will know how much I rail against such bullying. It's nice to see this very effective, touching, in every sense of the world, video, below.  

The kids are alright.